Lost Girl
by William Easley
Summary: After years of bad decisions, Dipper is off to track down Wendy, who's vanished. Not in my usual continuity, this one-shot was written for Wendip Week 2019 in response to prompt 4, "I always kinda knew."


_I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you._

* * *

_This is not in my normal Gravity Falls continuity, but is a story written for Wendip Week 2019 from Prompt 4, "I always kinda knew."_

* * *

**Lost Girl**

"Keep Portland Weird."

Dipper saw the graffiti all over the place. Portland, Oregon, was proud of its history as an oddball city, a refuge for the different, the offbeat, the strange, the unusual people. It held festivals for no discernible reason. The population sometimes seemed to regard the cops as only part of the landscape, nothing to actually worry about. And though the city seemed to have few rules, it did have limits—do whatever you want, but don't bug other people, dude.

He hadn't visited it often—a few times when he was thirteen and fourteen and then up to the time he'd left for college—but he hadn't been back in four, five years. It was a rainy winter that year. He had just finished everything but his thesis for his master's degree down in Palo Alto. He'd won a fellowship that meant he no longer had to drudge away as a research assistant for old Dr. Poldavy.

He took two months off.

His two Grunkles had bought a house in Gravity Falls. They were getting on in years, but still active. They didn't want to impose on Soos and Melody and their family, so instead of reclaiming the Shack, they lived downtown, a block behind City Hall, in—yep, a log house built by Daniel Corduroy.

"Stay with us, Mason," Grunkle Ford had said when he showed up with suitcase.

"Yeah," Stan said from his armchair. "You can have the attic! Just like old times!"

"Wouldn't be the same," Dipper said with a grin.

"It surely wouldn't," Ford agreed. "The attic has only three feet of space between the floor and the ceiling. What were you thinking, Stanley?"

"It was a joke, Poindexter," Stanley said. "So where's Mabel?"

"This week, off at a clothiers' convention in New York," Dipper said. "She's an entrepreneur."

"Where they chant Harry Reasoner or some deal? A cult?" Stan asked.

"A businesswoman," Ford said patiently. "You remember—she has her own line of clothing for teens. She sells it—"

"Over the Internet, yeah, yeah," Stan muttered. He waggled his eyebrows at Dipper. "He thinks I've gone senile. Nice beard, by the way. You some kind of retro hippie?"

Dipper's full beard wasn't long—about an inch—but he ruffled it and grinned. "Just laziness. My last semester got intense, and it was easier not to shave, so—I ought to get rid of it though."

"I wouldn't," Stan said. "It gives you the illusion of having a chin."

"See, that's why I'm not gonna stay here," Dipper said, but he was laughing.

"Seriously, Mason," Ford said, "we have a spare room. You're welcome to it. If we'd known you were going to visit, we would have tidied—"

"No, thank you both, but I'm not staying in Gravity Falls," Dipper said.

"We got some mysterious happenin's need explaining," Stanley tempted. "People have spotted a giant thingum stalking the woods!"

"One of the waterfalls ran red as blood last month," Ford said. "I still haven't accounted for that."

"Thanks," Dipper said. "But I'm kind of on the trail of something else. I want to rest here for a couple of nights, and then I'm heading over to Portland."

The two elder Pines twins glanced at each other. Stanley cleared his throat. "Uh, Dip, she's been missing for two years. I think even Manly Dan's accepted that she's gone, OK?"

"She wasn't abducted," Dipper said. "She left home."

"Yes, but—well, a single woman alone in the Northwest—you know the tragic history," Ford said.

"I have a small lead," Dipper told him. "I have to follow it through."

Stan tried again: "Kid, you know she got married."

"And divorced, yes," Dipper said. "It doesn't matter. I have to know."

Ford started to say something, but Stanley cut him off: "Let us know if we can help. We won't stand in your way."

* * *

Dipper lay on his side that night, staring out the window. He could just see the water tower, silvered by the moon. Soos would be upset when he learned that Dipper had come back after five years away—and had not visited the Shack.

That hurt Dipper, but he knew if he did walk in that door, he'd look over toward the cashier's counter and his heart would break all over again. Every room in the Shack spoke of Wendy. He saw her ghost everywhere.

"Stupid," he told himself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." He'd missed his chance right after his junior year in college. She was spending her last summer working in the Shack. The age difference didn't seem so great. Even Mabel had urged him—

But Wendy gave him no signal that he could pick up. And so he'd let it drift—and then that fall he'd heard that she'd taken up with a guy from out of town. That she'd married him.

And that ended it.

Even a year later, when Mabel phoned with the bad news, he still thought it was dead.

She had said quietly, "Wendy and that creep got divorced, Dipper."

"Oh," he'd said.

"Call her."

Thirty seconds went by. Mabel said, "Dipper? You still there?"

"It's too late," he'd managed, and then he hung up.

And another year, and he did not visit the Falls, but he heard about the stormy weather in the Corduroy house, Dan enraged at Wendy's having eloped, at her marrying such a jerk, at her coming back without a penny.

And finally one day she was just . . . gone. And no one had heard from her since.

* * *

When it's rainy in Portland, in January, it's rarely a pounding rain and virtually never a thunderstorm. The rain drifts down lazily, small drops, but it's gelid and slow and sometimes hangs around for hours. That day the high in the city bumped its head against 45 and instantly started down again. It would drop to 38 under cloudy skies, then head up again just as the drizzling rain came back.

It's a myth that Portland is one of the rainiest cities in the U.S. It doesn't even crack the top ten. Most of the rain fails between November and May, and much of it falls as it fell on Dipper Pines—a steady, dreary drizzle coming down from a sky the color of lead.

He felt like a noir-era private eye—he wore a trench coat, with liner, against the cold and the rain, and an Irish wool tweed walking hat. Think Professor Jones, Senior, in that movie about the Holy Grail. Not exactly a tough-guy fedora, but it kept his head dry.

He rented a room in an extended-stay motel—once part of a national chain, now a privately owned building that had been renamed (The Daisy Motel) and that had seen better days. All Dipper asked was a place that was clean, had a bed, and had a shower, and two out of three wasn't all that bad. At least it was cheap.

He spent a week walking the streets, seeing the graffiti, getting his feet wet and otherwise getting nowhere. It was the longest of shots, anyway.

His slim lead had come from, of all places, a campus concert. He hadn't actually attended—he never dated—but a minuscule line of type beneath the lead band's name caught his eye in the campus coffee shop: Also appearing: _Robbie V. and Tambry._

Dipper volunteered to help with the set-up (by walking backstage dressed in a tee shirt and jeans and asking, "What needs to be moved?") and so when the talent showed up two hours before the show, he was able to speak to Robbie and Tambry while the big guns were producing feedback.

"Wendy had this big fight with her dad," Tambry said. Compared to the old days, she was subdued, which meant she was nearly comatose. "Sorry, we've been doing a gig a day and I'm dead for sleep. Anyways, you probably heard her and her so-called husband broke up big time. There's more to it, but Wendy's dad had this grudge and you know they both have tempers."

"Word is that she moved to Portland," Robbie offered. "But I don't know of anybody who knows more than that."

A year-old tip. But Dipper remembered that, once or twice, Wendy had said she hoped to live in Portland someday.

So he made the rounds. Nobody remembered a striking redhead, freckles across her cheeks, hair down to here, sort of laid-back . . . .

No record of her at any of the colleges. He had spent a harrowing day going through police photos and files of runaways and—much worse—Jane Does who always, no matter what skill the photographer had, looked dead, because they were.

Then Dipper took a day off and meditated. What would a girl like Wendy do? What skills did she have?

She was an ace lumberjack.

Very little call for that in a city like Portland.

She'd worked retail.

But only a boss like Stan would have the patience not to fire her.

For her family, she had cooked and cleaned, until she was sick of it.

But—this was Portland. Lots of hotels and motels, and lots of restaurants and coffee shops.

And that led to three soggy days and nights of trudging the streets and patiently, endlessly, asking questions.

In fiction you get detectives like Sherlock Bleeding Holmes, one glance and he knows the suspect's name, address, height, weight, eye and hair color and taste in cravats.

In real life, most cases are solved by days and nights of trudging the streets and patiently, endlessly, asking questions.

* * *

The one thing the 24/7 Cup and Plate had going for it was a sort of catchy name. Aside from that, the location—on a side street that really was an alley with weak ambition—the ambience—it was a lot like a mess tent a few hundred yards behind the front lines in an ill-defined war—and the food—don't ask—left much to be desired.

Gwen Pinelli—name she'd chosen—was tired at 11:49 on a Friday night. She'd just pulled a ten-hour shift, and she was looking forward to going to her room and putting her feet up. Only three customers dawdled at the tables, and they were finished except for paying their checks. Then they did, one, two, three, and she was about to yell and ask Mr. Kali if she could take off early when she realized some jerk had just come in from the rain and sat hunched in the front booth.

With murder smoldering in her heart, she made her way over and, standing at his shoulder, asked, "Menu?"

The guy shook his head—he didn't even take off his hat. "Just coffee."

"Just coffee." Great, maybe a fifty-cent tip.

Whatever. Serve him and get rid of him. She went back and poured a cup and resisted the temptation to spit in it. But when she put it on the table, she asked with forced politeness, "Would you please mind paying the check now? I'm off in—" she glanced at the clock. "—in one minute ago, actually."

"Bring another cup and I'll pay. Fresh cup. New cup."

She did, setting it on the table at his elbow. "OK, that'll be—"

He interrupted: "Now go clock out and come here and sit down and have some coffee with me." He looked up for the first time.

She said, "I don't pick up that easy, guy."

"Please, Wendy. Have some coffee with me."

Ice water filled her veins just for a second. It was all she could do not to collapse right then and there, right on the stained, cracked linoleum checkerboard-tile floor. "Dipper?" she whispered.

* * *

". . . so I didn't have anywhere to go," she finished miserably. "I keep thinking I should move on, but—I just barely survive. I can't save a dime with the salary and tips I get here."

"Where are you living?" Dipper asked. He'd been prepared for anything, he thought, but this too-thin, exhausted woman with short black hair was more than he'd expected.

She grimaced. "Room in a boarding house. I, uh—I can't have visitors."

"I've got a room at the Daisy," he said. "It's not much."

She grinned and for a moment looked like her old self. "You askin' me to shack up?"

"To come and talk," he said. When she hesitated, he said gently, "This is me, Wendy. You said if I ever stopped being your friend—"

"I'd throw myself in the Bottomless Pit," she whispered.

"I haven't stopped."

* * *

They talked the night through. Much of what she told him was bitter. Both of them shed tears. She spoke of her terrible mistake, whose name was Terry Cooglin. "I thought he was an OK guy," she said. "Somebody to get me out of Gravity Falls. Didn't know he was crazy."

There had been fights. There had been injuries. She showed him her upper teeth, right incisor and eye tooth. "This is a bridge," she said. "He punched me one night."

"I'd kill him," Dipper told her. "But he's already dead."

Wendy had not heard, so he summed up what he'd learned. With two other guys, Terry had tried to rob a convenience store in Mobile, Alabama. The robbery went bad, segued into a nasty hostage situation and a shoot-out, and when it was over, all three robbers lay dead of gunshot wounds. "It happened last July," he said. "I found that out when I first started trying to find you. That fall I ran into Tambry and Robbie and heard you possibly were in Portland. Terry's out of your life, Wendy."

"I wish I could be sad," Wendy said.

He sat with his arm around her waist. The crummy little room had no chairs, so they perched on the edge of the bed. But they never lay down. Dipper smoothed her hair and said quietly, "It's time for you to get out of here."

"Too late," she said.

"No. I want to ask—"

"There was a baby, too," she said abruptly, and then she cried with great racking sobs, and he held her until she could gasp out the story. She had been three months along. Terry, who claimed to be a master of kung fu, had blown up at her about something trivial—she couldn't even remember what—and had kicked her in the stomach. She lost the baby.

"It wasn't your fault," Dipper told her gently.

"I feel like it was."

"Does it mean you can't have babies?"

She shook her head. "Just—I just lost the little girl."

"It's time for you to come home," he said.

This time she nodded.

She didn't owe any money to her landlady. She felt like she should give her notice to Mr. Kali. A couple of phone calls took care of both.

After their sleepless night, they walked out into a morning with the sun beginning to peek through. "Let's go get your things," Dipper said as he opened the passenger door of his car for her.

Wendy seemed to shrink inside herself as they drove back to Gravity Falls. She was subdued and nervous, but Grunkle Stan hugged her and said gruffly, "Welcome home, kid. We gotta fatten you up."

Dipper called Manly Dan. He came in, weeping, and hugged Wendy, too. "I'm sorry I blowed up," he said. "I was wrong."

"Me, too," she gasped. When Manly Dan hugs someone, they know they've been hugged.

After the two of them talked, after Dan had left, Dipper then took Wendy out to their spot—the glade where Stan had always had campfires when he was in the mood for stories. She perched like a timid bird on the log, but then listened to birdsong and woodpecker drum accompaniment and finally sighed and looked more like her old, confident self.

"OK," he said. "I've got a ring. And I'm going to ask you. And you're going to say—"

"Dipper," she whispered.

"I just want to tell you a few things first," Dipper said. "I'm a grad student with a year to go before I graduate. I don't have a job lined up. For now, I've got an apartment big enough for both of us. With my fellowship, we can make it if we live cheap. From then on, we do the best we can. I can't promise you anything much. I can only say that together we can face everything and overcome anything. I'm sorry I was so chicken, but—I love you, Wendy. I always have. I always will. Please marry me."

"I guess I have to," she said.

"No," he told her. "I'm no knight in shining armor. You made some crappy decisions, but so did I. I should have been here for you, and I wasn't, because I've been a coward. We're both kind of broken. But we're better together."

"Dipper, I'll marry you," she said.

They embraced and kissed. "You'll have to shave that beard," she murmured.

"You'll have to stop coloring your hair black," he said.

"Deal," she agreed. "Dipper, I love you. I have for years, but—I didn't think you were interested any longer."

"I've loved you since day one," Dipper said. "But we'd agreed to be friends."

"Bad timing."

"It's all right now," he told her. "When I came looking for you—I was sure I would find you. That's why I'd saved up for the ring. Something told me that when I asked you to marry me, you'd say yes. I guess—well, I guess I always kinda knew."

* * *

The End


End file.
